It seems a distant memory now, but during President Obama’s first two years in office he achieved a great deal.

He passed his health care reform, and saved the auto industry from collapse. He signed Wall Street reforms that protect consumers and guard against another meltdown. He passed far-reaching education reforms over the objections of the teachers’ unions, cut middle-class taxes, and began regulating tobacco.

But those days are gone. Our politics hopelessly polarized. If Obama sent Republicans a resolution supporting hamburgers, they would insist on hot dogs instead.

Much of what Obama proposed last night was small bore. He wants tax incentives for companies to move jobs back to America from overseas. He promised to toughen enforcement of trade rules against nations like China that manipulate their currencies to gain advantage. He offered a modest plan to encourage mortgage refinances.

Some plans were more ambitious, like reforming education so that schools can get rid of bad teachers and reward good ones; reforming immigration to provide a path to citizenship; investing in research and development, especially on clean energy projects; offering job training to match workers to new jobs; and expanding natural gas drilling, with tough regulations to protect groundwater supplies.

If the speech lacked power, it’s mostly because everyone knew that Republicans are determined to block him, and to shrink the role of government even in the face of our economic crisis.

The political punch came when Obama struck a populist tone, saying that millionaires should pay at least 30 percent in income taxes.

This is where Republicans are in deep trouble this year. Seated next to Michelle Obama last night was Debbie Bosanik, the now-famous secretary for Warren Buffet, who pays taxes at a higher rate than her billionaire boss — and at a higher rate than Mitt Romney, the Republican front-runner, who revealed yesterday that he paid about 15 percent on income of $20 million a year over the last two years. That is outrageously unfair, and polls show most American object.

Romney has no obligation to pay more than he must. But like other GOP candidates, he is pressing for even deeper tax cuts for the rich. And that is made worse when they embrace the budget presented by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican budget chairman, that aims 70 percent of its spending cuts at means-tested programs.

In the GOP response, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels called Obama’s speech "an effort to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others."

But ask yourself this: Who is really dividing America? The party that consistently favors the rich over the rest, or the party that objects?